25th March 2016

The AcSEED Initiative

The AcSEED Initiative is a concept founded by young people with direct personal experience of mental illness at a young age. Their combined experiences have been used to identify and recommend a range of best practices that could have helped significantly in identifying and supporting their emerging emotional difficulties during school years. They were unanimous in viewing school as a pivotal environment that significantly influenced their emotional development, and in the belief that targeted intervention within this educational and social framework could have made a significant difference in helping to contain and manage their mental health vulnerabilities.

There is wide variation in the emotional support services provided by schools in the UK, with no definition of best practices or measure of quality and results. Those schools that have invested in the emotional wellbeing of their students have been frustrated by the lack of recognition for their initiatives.

The AcSEED Award is a quality assurance mark presented to schools that have made a substantial effort to support the mental health of their students. It encourages and rewards the provision of high quality emotional wellbeing services, from the broad provision of information right through to appropriately targeted intervention. Based on best practices, the scheme defines a set of standard criteria that all schools must meet in order to receive the award.

Any UK primary or secondary school can apply for The AcSEED Award which requires an initial self-assessment and subsequent review and ratification by representatives of The AcSEED Initiative. Qualifying schools will also need to renew their award status periodically to ensure that a high standard of support is being actively maintained and deployed.